Like many things associated with Wal-mart, their TV commercials are really annoying. When they started their new campaign around two years ago, there were a lot of people offended by Wal-mart’s assertion that “Christmas costs less” there. This inferred that Christmas actually had some sort of price tag that could be discounted. Granted, these are the same people who likely complained that “The Holidays” were being used in place of Christmas. Of course, you can’t please everybody.
I’m watching something on TV the other night and saw an ad that they are running now for Halloween. Of course, it implies that Halloween costs less there. But something else has always struck me as odd in these commercials, and it wasn’t until this one that I really caught on to what it was. In that commercial, you see someone holding a big Halloween party that has tons of decorations, a buffet of food and candy, and costumes for everybody. Something is wrong with this picture, and most viewers of it probably won’t catch it.
Who is going to spend that much on Halloween, buying that much useless crap? Granted, there are a lot of people who have spent that much and will continue to do so. But really, only because this ad communicates to them that it’s okay for them to keep doing it. What’s really underhanded about the ad is that it implies that you already planned on spending that much on useless Halloween items. Of course, you’ll save money if you buy it at Wal-mart. But you’ll save even more money once you realize you don’t need to buy that stuff. The ad focuses on the discounts you’ll get at Wal-mart, but perhaps the real message of the ad is the one that it doesn’t really spell out clearly. It infers that you already planned on buying a large quantity of candy, decorations and costumes. Since you just remembered that you need to buy that much junk, you might as well do it at Wal-mart since they said it’s cheaper.
I used to be a Wal-mart apologist. Sure, they produced everything in sweatshops. Sure, they run local shops out of business. Sure, they do everything they can to prevent unions and keep wages down. But they continue to offer a cheap and efficient way of buying everything you need in one place. At some point you realize that the personal benefits aren’t worth it. And there of course is the point where you realize what exactly Wal-mart is doing to middle America. But perhaps the condescending and creepily effectual sort of assertions that they make in their ads is what did it in for me.
I was the guest movie reviewer on the local CBS affiliate this week, we saw the movie Surrogates with Bruce Willis. As is pointed out in the video below, it’s nothing really new. If you’ve seen a lot of SciFi movies in the past decade, it will all seem somewhat rehashed. But it was nice to see a SciFi movie tackle a uniquely relevant modern problem, even if it didn’t do it so well.
Thanks again to WHNT for the opportunity! I’d love to do it again sometime.
This is something I’ve been becoming more interested in lately. I think one of the best things you can do with design is strive for simplicity, and using only fonts and color is one of the most simple things you can do. But if you add just one more dimension to that, you get something really special.
These are three really great uses of motion typography that I’ve found on YouTube. There are a ton of these on there, but not many that really get the point across as well as these do. There are just a few small things that really make these great, apart from just being really darn simple. They use minimalist fonts, only use other iconography when it makes complete sense, and use font sizes and motion to great effect. Granted, you typically only see this sort of thing in commercials. But when you take marketing out of the equation, you get something really special
There are a lot of podcasts I’ve subscribed to inside of iTunes, but the one that I make a point to listen to each week is This Week In Tech with Leo Laporte. He and his guests have been having an ongoing discussion over the past few weeks about a few points of ethics within journalistic circles. Specifically, the issue has been that some journalists who are reviewing products have obvious vested interest in the success of the product they are critiquing. David Pogue of the New York Times wrote a gleaming review of the new Mac OS, despite the fact that he is a writer of a series of user guides for Mac operating systems and software packages. Ethically speaking, this is an issue as David has a specific vested interest in the success of the OS in order to spur success of his books.
Leo interviews Pogue on TWIT 213, in which Pogue brings up a few totally valid counterpoints. To be fair, this isn’t an issue specific to David. As he points out, this is something that many reviewers and journalists are doing. Print journalism is dying off quickly, and journalists have typically been some of the first to go in the recent recession. Writing these books have been an almost necessary work for these guys in order to make and secure a living. It’s a problem that will have to be worked on, and one that I wanted to bring up here but not really delve into. What I did want to talk about is the alarming idea that David brought up, in that he claimed that he’s not a journalist. Furthermore, because of his refusal to take on this description, he seems to have the idea that this alleviates him of certain responsibilities.
Let’s get one thing straight first. I may not have gone to any journalism classes at a university that lacks the degree, but it doesn’t take a journalism major to realize that there are different classifications within that title. You can be an opinion writer, a columnist, a beat writer, an investigative journalist, and so on. But isn’t it time that we considered a blogger to be a journalist? The medium is large enough now that you simply cannot lump all bloggers into one classified pile. In all technicality, The Huffington Post is a blog. Yet if you were to cite an unbiased article from that publication in a college class, your professor is unlikely to give you a hard time about it. There is a difference though, as the same rules of credibility certainly apply. For instance, take the site you are reading this now. I make no amends of the fact that what you’re reading is my opinion. This post itself is my opinion, I’m not trying to dress it up as citable and inalienable fact at all. If you want to disagree, that’s fine. That’s what comments on blogs are for, and what the feedback page in the newspaper is for.
Then again, I don’t write this for the New York Times.
The Times may not be the bastion of journalistic ethos anymore, but it’s still a highly valued and credible organization. I’m just a guy writing about his interests and opinions on his own web site, David Pogue is a guy writing reviews of very important products for the New York Times. It’s beyond irresponsible for him to claim that he’s “just a blogger”, when he’s doing such. The fact is, he’s writing descriptions and educated opinions of very popular products for a very large readership. That’s a responsibility far too large to be brushed away when other professionals in the field have valid points about how you could handle yourself differently.
Yes, David. You’re a blogger. But you’re blogging for the New York Times, not some run of the mill WordPress site like I am. You have more to stand up for, more responsibility laid upon you. You’re a journalist, and you have every responsibility to yourself and your publication. Those things you mentioned that aren’t your job are your job. Just as much as the guy who writes front page news articles every day.
It’s sort of scary to think about, but this decade is going to be over pretty soon. I don’t even know if we know what to call it yet. The 2000’s? The double zeros? Whatever the case, I’ve been thinking about making a few lists to pick out what I’ve enjoyed the most over the past ten years. I’ll do a few more of these as the year draws to a close, but wanted to start out with movies.
10. Batman Begins - Yes, I’m totally picking this over the Dark Knight. The sequel may actually be a better film technically, and in terms of script and performance. But Batman Begins was the first movie of the decade that showed that a comic book movie can be taken seriously. Instead of showing a campy origin story like Spider-man did earlier in the decade, it did everything to make you believe that Batman could be real. Without that context, Dark Knight couldn’t have happened. Nor could a lot of comic book movies in the second half of the decade.
9. Sunshine – This also gets my vote for most underrated movie of the decade. Before everyone was kissing Danny Boyle’s behind because of Slumdog Millionaire, he made a pitch perfect SciFi film that was unlike anything ever seen until Moon with Sam Rockwell came along. Although it sort of delves into another genre altogether in the third act, it stays true to an awesome and challenging thesis that does what SciFi used to and should do…make you think.
8. Napoleon Dynamite – You either love this movie or hate it, there is no other movie I can think of that has no middle ground like this does. And I love it. If Trapper Keepers, slap bracelets, and Nickelodeon shows will always remind us of the 90’s, Napoleon Dynamite will always remind us of the 2000’s. It’s both a surreal and eerily accurate picture of what it’s like to grow up in this decade as someone who doesn’t fit any social norm, which often happens. And it’s one of the most funny movies I’ve ever seen because of it.
7. Shaun of the Dead – One of the reasons that Ghostbusters is one of my favorite movies of all time is because it masterfully intertwines two genres that you’d never think could co-exist. The same goes here, who ever thought you could make something out of a romantic comedy and a zombie movie? Shaun of the Dead also gets my vote for the best written movie of the decade for being such an Everlasting Gobstopper of comedy gold and quotable scenes.
6. Catch Me If You Can - Before there was Mad Men, there was this. Over the past year or so, I’ve heard so many gush about how Mad Men is the best TV show to nail an era and a certain vibe. It’s only ripping this off. Catch Me If You Can is an elaborate heist movie full of about three different genres that intertwine perfectly, but it also has the coolest production design of the decade. It’s also really representative of the sort of experimental stuff that Speilberg has pulled off so well in the past six or seven years.
5. Kill Bill Vol. 1 – If Pulp Fiction made such an impact on filmmakers or film fans back in the early 90’s, the Kill Bill films did the same for me this decade. On paper, the scenario and factors of this movie make it seem as if it’s destined for cheese. And admittedly, it is pretty cheezy after all. But in paying homage to those kind of movies that preceded it, Tarantino made something that oozes new school character and that looks and feels wholly different than most anything in movies this decade.
4. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? – So maybe another movie from the Coen Brothers won anOscar load this decade, but I still believe that this was far better. If you look at their entire movie catalog, you can easily see that they always want to try something different every time. A different soundtrack, a different genre, different setting. Sometimes it comes across as comical or perhaps parodic, but Oh Brother is absolutely spot on. It nails the region and era that it’s set in, while keeping a somewhat surreal feel to it.
And having lived nearly all my life in an area just an hour’s drive away from the location of the movie, I can tell you that it certainly struck a chord. The characters are all caricatures of someone we all know, and the back story of a depression-reaked South saved by the TVA is one we all understand well. And that’s not to mention the insanely popular soundtrack that everyone in The South is issued a copy of at birth.
3. Good Night, And Good Luck – Even though this movie was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, it’s somewhat fallen out of pop culture memory in the following years. I really think that once this movie ages, it will be appreciated as a hugely impactive social and political statement that could only be made in a movie. It put the right metaphor in the public consciousness at the precisely right time in order to make people think about current political implications in light of historical ones. I trust that once more time passes, history won’t be kind to the kind of behavior that this movie admonishes but will be kind to the movie itself for drawing attention to it.
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – If you knew me at all, you would have known that one of these would make it this far up such a list. If you’d asked me a few years ago witch Rings film was my favorite, I would have said The Two Towers without hesitating. But as these movies have aged along with me, it’s becoming more and more apparent that Fellowship of the Ring is byfar the best of the trilogy.
If you can remember reading up about Peter Jackson’s trilogy before it was released, you’ll remember the skepticism. An odd filmmaker from a place nobody remembered who had made some weird movies that nobody had really seen was going to make three whole movies out of the most wildly popular fantasy book series ever. It seemed like a ridiculous proposal destined to fail. But Fellowship of the Ring was released and left everyone’s jaw agape. It was masterfully adapted, and seemed as if was a classic that had been in existence for years the first day it was in a theater. The following two movies were perfect continuations of the story, but it was Fellowship of the Ring that paved the way.
1. Wall-E – If anything, this decade was owned by Pixar. Back in the 90’s, they made what were generally seen as smart family films. But after Monsters Inc made them four for four, after Finding Nemo made insane amounts of money, and after The Incredibles earned a lot of geek cred, it was becoming obvious that pure film gold was being developed in Emeryville.
Wall-E is the absolute crown jewel in the Pixar library. You can go back to read my review of the movie that I wrote when it was released to see how much I gushed about it then, and I honestly still feel the same way now. You can read that if you’d like, but I’ll sum it up by saying Wall-E is without a doubt my favorite movie of the decade. There are guys in their forties who remember seeing Star Wars in the theater for the first time, and I’ll always remember being seated at the end of the movie and finding myself absolutely paralyzed with shock at how amazing Wall-E was.
Honorable Mention: Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith – It’s really unfair for me to go about comparing any Star Wars movie to anything else. Not because they are necessarily better than other movies release along with them, but because they’re ingrained as a part of culture for me more so than existing as films. But even so, Revenge of the Sith was clearly the best of the bunch. While anyone who existed before the prequels won’t want to see any of them existing so high up a list, it’s impossible to not deny them the impact that they’ve had on younger generations or on the geek community as a whole.
